


Velocity

by mibi_chan



Category: Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Tragic Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-15
Packaged: 2017-12-23 15:34:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mibi_chan/pseuds/mibi_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two-Part Sequel to 'Leverage' - Fate turns the tides in Vegeta's favor to reveal the infinite power of the Dragon Balls. But will nothing, not even the memory of trusting blue eyes and a sweet song, quell his desire for power above all things? Will Vegeta be the prince Bulma knew him to be? When honor seems a prize he can never reclaim, the choice is difficult indeed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Velocity

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Hehehehe… Ooooh I am one crazy bitch aren't I? Yep, I wrote a sequel to the fairy tale challenge that 'We're Just Saiyan…' did way back in May. You may recall my one-shot, 'Leverage'. Oh, and go check out that community if you haven't seen me say it a million times before. ;-)
> 
> Well, thanks to some friggin awesome reviews and the spark planted in me by smalsa, followed by an intense brainstorming sesh with catgirl26 (after which we did a virtual fist bump, sorta…), welcome to this two-part sequel to 'Leverage'. So, for everyone out there who was pleased with that little thing, and yet still so sad with Bulma's *a-hem* situation: this is for you.
> 
> Thank you all readers! I truly appreciate all of your reviews and continued support. Let me know your thoughts, and I've got most of the next part done already so no worries. I swear I'm working on my other long chapter fics, too. ;-) Enjoy

**Velocity**

The Prince Who Saved Rapunzel … sort of.

Part One - Your Executioner

               

The stars were like little dots of hope on a pitch black canvas of endless despair and drudgery.  Some of them twinkled, sparkling and calling out to him: subjects of a lost, forgotten empire whose worshipful voices he could imagine if he tried hard enough.  Others were steady beacons of solid light, whose never fading brilliance called him ever closer to a seemingly unattainable precipice of might, where he might finally find justice.  Vengeance.  Peace.

                Vegeta stood on a south-facing ledge of cracked obsidian rock, gazing into the ever-night sky of Planet Stahgrin.  Its sun, so far away that it could barely be seen, bestowed enough warmth on its child so as to produce life so unlike any Vegeta had seen thus far.  They were strong enough creatures, he thought, built like the bovine mutants on Yuki-sei usually killed for meat or hunted for sport.  But they stood upright, were covered with thick orange fur, and spoke in a harsh language he hadn’t even bothered to study before coming here to purge this hellish place.  Stahgrin wasn’t useful for much, it being such a cold and uninviting place, but Frieza wanted that obsidian.  And the gods be damned if he wasn’t going to get it.

                Naturally, when the natives of Stahgrin were given an ultimatum by His Highness, Emperor Frieza, first of his name and Galactic Overlord of nearly seven sectors within this quadrant, they’d refused.  Vegeta remembered smirking at that, visibly enough to earn him a swift swat in the face with Frieza’s tail after they’d been left alone on the master’s bridge.  The impact had nearly dislocated his jaw, and sent him stumbling backward nearly six feet.  But Vegeta also remembered the look of surprise in Frieza’s sick, pale expression: his utter surprise that the attack hadn’t done more damage, that Vegeta had merely stumbled in an attempt to regain his footing instead of skidding twenty feet across the floor like the gnat he was.  They’d locked eyes then, and Frieza knew.

                Vegeta’s fist clenched, and then he rubbed his fingers together.  Stahgrin blood soaked his right glove, a gushing remnant of the poor ‘warrior’ the natives had sent to challenge him and the hole he’d put through his chest.  The Stahgrin had bright blue blood, he noted, but it still smelled the same.  It still smelled the same and it smelled glorious—like the flowers on Planet Yarbow…  Like hair so long, thick and blue that if he tried hard enough, he could still feel on his bare fingers.

                Stahgrin’s pale sun flickered hesitantly in the dark sky and blood rushed down over the hills of his palm hand with a sickening _trickle_.  He realized with sudden clarity that the group of natives, who had sent their purportedly strong furry warrior into battle against the Saiyan Prince, was watching him with distinct horror.  Behind him, perhaps only twenty feet, Vegeta could hear Nappa’s chuckle.

                “My Prince, you are ever dramatic,” he told him.  But of course, he was right.

                Vegeta watched the group of cowering, shuffling Stahgrins.  The dead eyes of the fallen warrior on the ground in front of him reminded him of another pair so lifeless; they always did.  It never mattered how many dead eyes he looked into, because Vegeta always saw the same astonished, blue depths looking back at him.  He snarled, ground his teeth together and let out a particularly animalistic roar.  They gasped, muttered in their harsh language and backed away, their orange fur rustling in the heavy atmosphere.

                “You have been given ample time to comply with Emperor Frieza’s requests,” he told them, his voice rough and heavy.  “Since you have no intention of submitting to his wishes, then I am ordered by him to be your executioner.”

                Nappa had come to his side, though he did not need the assistance, and Vegeta waved him away with a dismissive hand.

                “Prince Vegeta?” he questioned.

                “Nappa,” Vegeta said as he raised a palm into the air and aimed directly at the retreating Stahgrins, “Nappa.  Whose prince am I?”

                His comrade did not answer, only stared at him in blank confusion.  Vegeta laughed sadly and let the energy gather in his palm until it was big enough to obscure the edges of the fleeing natives.  He released it, and the resulting wave skidded across the obsidian, crushed into the hard earth of Planet Stahgrin and engulfed the defeated challengers in a warm shell of humming destruction.

                After a few moments, the ki wave dissipated, and no trace of the Stahgrins could be found within a mile radius of their position.  There would be more though, in the strange hulking settlements he’d seen during planetfall, and Vegeta turned to face Nappa.

                “We’ll move out to find the rest,” he told the taller Saiyan.

                “My Prince…?”  Nappa had managed, in a mere moment, to be disheartened by his sire’s countenance.

                “Just shut the fuck up and let’s move out, Nappa.”

                Vegeta’s fury was barely masked by his eagerness to finish this purge mission and return to the fleet ship, after which he had been pegged to a three-day assignment on Planet Yarbow.  Frieza had not forgotten that place, and when a hastily installed weapons manufacture facility had been installed there seven years ago Vegeta had, at first, been furious.  At first.

The wretched lizard had probably been ecstatic at the thought of sending his favorite monkey there to relive that moment, that moment when her eyes had gone dead, over and over.  To remind him that nothing could be precious to him again, that nothing belonged to him, and that no amount of belief from anyone would make him the prince of anything.

                “My Prince,” Nappa began again tentatively, “something troubles you?”

                “It troubles me,” Vegeta said, “that instead of obeying my orders you continue to stand there like a dense hulking moron, _asking_ about what troubles me!”

                _Gods,_ it was like trying to reason with a fucking rock!  Vegeta patted his gloved hands together and rubbed some black dust and blue blood from them.  When he got back to the ship he’d have to have these laundered somehow, though the dust from the obsidian rock may have stained them irreparably.  Vegeta ground his teeth together; Nappa was still watching him from behind.

                “I swear to all the dead War Gods, Nappa,” Vegeta growled as he squatted by his pod, “I will pound your face into your skull if you do not move out _now_.  And then, when we’ve returned to the fleet ship I’ll pound in Raditz’ face just for good measure.”

                “Our War Gods are not dead, My Prince.”  Nappa’s voice grew in volume as he came closer, but the sardonic tone so typical of his towering companion was not present.  Vegeta pounded his fists into the black dust at his feet and stood, swiveling around to face his old comrade.

                “Are they not?  How many years has it been now, Nappa?” he snapped at the bigger Saiyan.  “How many years since Frieza took me?  Since my own father gave up his crown prince to a life of foot-soldiery and servitude, to be humiliated by a sadistic tyrant at every turn?  How many years since Planet Vegeta was reduced to crumbling ash?”

                Perhaps twenty or so years, by Vegeta’s reckoning, and every day since then a struggle to regain his stolen honor: his unattained throne.  It was never to be; that day on Yarbow eight years ago had taught him as much.  Even _her_ words…  Even the truth she had uttered in her dying breaths seemed a distant possibility.  _He is more a prince, a lord, than you will ever be._

                “Whose prince am I then, Nappa?  Tell me again?”  His voice spewed sarcastic venom.  “Whose glorified little prince am I, when I gleefully slaughter hundreds with a snap of my wrist—at the command of another?”

                Once King Vegeta’s most trusted officer, Nappa did not answer right away.  The dull light of Stahgrin’s sun reflected off of his shaved head.  Even the slight rustle of Nappa’s tail, near to his waist as ever, did not give away his thoughts at first.  Nappa uncurled his tail then, and bent to one knee in front of Vegeta.  The Saiyan Prince’s jaw tightened at the sight, and for a moment he thought to tear Nappa’s head from his shoulders.  If he did not need him to finish this job quickly, he would do it.

                “You are _my_ prince, Vegeta,” Nappa said then, his head bowed.  His voice conveyed none of the emotion that Vegeta could sense in the words themselves.  But it was there nonetheless.  “You are Raditz’ prince, and despite that we are few, we honor you.”

                Vegeta realized dimly that Nappa had said everything in Saiyago.  It was rare that they spoke it to one another, but for missions such as this, and even then it would be in hushed tones inside their barracks where no one would hear the words and report such indiscretion to Frieza.  His jaw loosened just a bit, and he looked out at the unending night sky again.  Vegeta wondered if he had it in him to finish off the Stahgrin tonight.  He took two deep breaths and exhaled heavily.  Nappa’s head lifted and Vegeta met his solid black, Saiyan gaze.

                “Get up,” Vegeta told him, just a bit less viciously than before, in Saiyago.  “We need to finish this--!”  Vegeta balked when he looked back up at the stars.  “We need to finish this, Nappa!”

                He shook his head and turned back to the open pod so he could retrieve a nutrition supplement.  _Gods_ he was exhausted by this trip.  Nappa was shifting behind him to stand, and waited patiently now for his prince to lead the way.  As Vegeta popped open the lid of the supplement and downed it in a single gulp, half gagging at its spit-like consistency, he turned back to Nappa.  He crushed the small bottle in his fist and let it drop back into the pod.  He looked out toward the western sky, where the stars were less numerous than in the east of Planet Stahgrin’s view, and he pointed to the brightest one he could see.

                “Somewhere out there is Planet Vegeta’s sun, Nappa.  Even while Frieza lives, it still burns hot and furious.”  Like Yarbow’s yellow sun, like the desire in that Chikyuu-jin’s eyes and the practically insurmountable belief she had instilled in him.  Vegeta paused, clenched his fist at his side and narrowed his gaze at the bright unnamed star.  He spoke quietly, threateningly.

                “Someday soon I’m going to fucking murder that evil dreg of the underworld with my bare hands.  Piece by piece.  We will see who is lord of this galaxy then.”

 

#

 

                On the infrequent occasions that Frieza sent Vegeta to Yarbow, to inspect the weapons facility there and assure that operations were running smoothly for the armament of Frieza’s lower-order foot soldiers that _needed_ such weapons, Vegeta was sure it was for nothing but the promise of humiliation.  Not only was the task far beneath his stratum of expertise in… _other_ pursuits, but the choice of a facility on Yarbow was so glaringly obvious that Vegeta would be a fool to miss the implications.  If only Frieza knew that the opposite was true; Vegeta relished the assignments to Yarbow.

                After completing his inspection and reprimanding enough of the inept morons who ran the facility, Vegeta announced his early departure to the bunker and requested a private cell.  No one here was high in station enough to refuse him and so, after making an appearance there and pacing back and forth in front of his admittedly large cot, Vegeta removed his scouter and slid it between the foot of the cot and the small personals safe next to it.  He wondered for a moment then, if what he was about to do would be prudent.  He’d done it on more than one occasion on his ‘missions’ to Yarbow and had not yet been caught.  But why ruin such an _important_ assignment such as this with hesitation?  Fuck it.

               He unlatched his chest armor, removed it and locked it in the safe by the bed, and then stood by the door of his cell, listening.  When he was sure that no one was yet prowling this particular block, Vegeta left the room and slid the primitive door structure closed behind him.  He made his way through the block until he reached a particular exit that the same inept fools he’d just reprimanded for their lax security concerns always, without fail, left open and unarmed.

                He arrived at the clearing quickly, for it was no further than two kilometers from the facility bunker, slid his limbs from his battle suit so that only his shorts remained, and sighed.  Here, he could remember the feel of the grass on his bare feet and the stillness of the mysterious wood.

Vegeta came to this clearing because if he did not, and he would never voice the reason aloud, he thought he would somehow forget her face.  If he forgot those wide, trusting blue eyes, or the knowing smile on her full lips, then he may forget to keep getting stronger and prove that her words were true.

By the gods, he _had_ been getting stronger: stronger each time they put him in that regen tank after a particularly brutal mission.  Each time they overlooked how much he’d just _let_ himself get beaten to within an inch of his life by his Lord, just so they’d put him in there and let his Saiyan genetics restructure his body with more power than any of them knew was possible.  _The bloody gods-damned fools…_

                Vegeta sat in the cool grass and pressed his lips together.  _Yes_ , he remembered that feeling.  He leaned back on his arms, staring up at that tower, at the plant growth that had overwhelmed the hole of destruction at its top, where Frieza had come through and hurled Vegeta against the wall without effort.  Where he’d pressed his fingers into the Chikyuu woman’s shoulder and wiped out her existence forever.

                His toes curled in the grass, and he shut his eyes.  Vegeta’s world reduced to the smell of the trees and the memory of how the tower had looked when he’d first seen it, eight years ago on that purge mission where he’d found something unexpected and stirring.  Frieza would never know just how much keeping this planet intact did for Vegeta’s persistence.  The Saiyan Prince smirked devilishly at the thought of Frieza’s face when he’d blasted his favorite plaything across the cheek with his thick, white tail not a week ago, and seen only the beginnings of his demise.

His bare fingers gripped the cool grass, and he felt it rip from the roots the way Frieza’s limbs would eventually rip from his body, one by one until he got to the bastard’s head.  Until there was nothing left of him but miserable gore, and he could see the face of the one who was about to end his reign of galactic subjugation.  And after that, well…  Nothing really mattered after that but the sweet smell of blood and perhaps even the roar of the long dormant Oozaru.  Indeed, Frieza’s lackeys would see who was really lord of this galaxy; they would see whose destiny it had been all along.

_“Prince Vegeta, you always come to the same spot.”_

The voice was hauntingly familiar.  Ah yes, he would dream of her here, too.  It was the only place he ever dreamt of her.  Something about outer space was too endlessly black for the brightness in her eyes, though she had admitted to being a fleet ship courtesan for several years.  But on Yarbow, in this clearing and as he gazed at the tower, he would dream of her.  She would come to him here.  Vegeta chuckled softly and lay down on his back in the cool grass.

“You’ve come early, Chikyuu woman,” he said aloud and rested his head on one arm.  He was usually asleep before she arrived.  The scent of her hair engulfed him, and though his eyes were still closed he could feel the veil of blue tresses surround him, like they always did.  Her melodic laughter danced across the silent clearing on the edges of the wind.

“ _My name is_ Bulma _…_ ”  She whispered against the breeze, her voice floating into his ear and through the length of his body.

And then she began to sing; she would sing the same Saiyan folksong he’d heard in the woods that day as he crept through them, cursing Frieza’s incompetence and wondering who in the hell knew such a tune in the backwoods of this remote planet.  Then she laughed again in his ear, so softly that it could have been a bird in flight, and whispered to him.  Sometimes he could not understand the words, they were so soft, but today he heard them as clearly as he had that day in the tower.

_“Don’t you ever want to be someone else, Prince Vegeta…?  I thought that if you believed me that you’d…?  You are not as cruel as I’d expected…_

_“I’ve always known you.”_

How she had known him then remained a mystery, and Vegeta had never cared to find out.  Of course, she had probably seen him on the fleet ship many times, or even in the pleasure wards when he’d made any one of his infrequent visits there.  Though a Chikyuu-jin, known for beauty such as hers, would probably not have been in any of the wards he’d visited.  But the dead light in her eyes when Frieza killed her had chased away any curiosity of her origin or of any who had known her, and he hadn’t visited those wards in eight years.

Vegeta lifted a hand into the air, reaching out for the hands that were not there, but that seemed to touch him now in the ways she’d touched him then.  His lip curled upward into a vain sort of snarl.

“What more did you expect from me?” he whispered to her memory, but her ghostly touch did not diminish, and he cursed aloud on a gasp of desire.  “Did you expect salvation?  Hah!  I should have killed you myself.”

The laughter came again, and the touch slid into his shorts, against the blazing hard erection that always came with her spirit hands.  Was it only her spirit that visited him in this place?  Perhaps her sad, pathetically innocent life had spared her the darkness of hell and the gods were able to grant her use of her body.  It always felt that way—felt so real that he was left panting for air at the thought of it, his chest heaving off of the soft flora under him and his voice gruff with Saiyan curses for her insolence.

Her mouth came after her hands, teasing the straining muscles of his abdomen with delicate kisses.  They were the kind she’d never had the chance to give him before, and probably the kind that she would have given a lover from her home world.  _Hah!  A silly notion to consider._

Her sweet lips engulfed him with red hot hunger, real or imagined, and all he could do was groan against the feel of it.  Then, somewhere in between the touching she would ride against him, meeting the thrust and grind of his hips with every bit of the vigor she had shown in life on that one day, in that tower.  Her body, bathed in a swath of white light was as lovely as he remembered, and it writhed against him in the throes of something powerful that only a prince could give her:  the prince she thought he was.  Her face, brows creased and mouth open in the cries of release, was haloed by the blue aura of her soft mane.

Vegeta’s eyes snapped open and he cried out once, choking on the force of it and rolling to the side to spill himself into the grass like an adolescent just out of a wet dream.  Bloody gods, his shorts were down to his knees.

“Fuck,” he groaned aloud, still short of breath.  He let his bare hands stroke out the last pulses of release from his cock and then planted one palm flat against the dirt and greenery.  Today, her presence only forced a reminder that he had not yet attained what he had strived to attain for more years than he could count.

Vegeta pushed himself up to his knees and slid the tight shorts back up to his waist, swearing at his twitching loins.  He then stood, facing the wood, and cursed her memory, because it was not there anymore and he was alone in this place.  A growl simmered in his chest as his aura charged and he swiveled around to face the remains of the tower.  Vegeta gathered a dan of energy just about as large as the one he’d used to destroy the renegade band of Stahgrins just two weeks ago.  He cried out, against the abandonment from her spirit and the still stirring desire in his belly, and against the hope he had seen in her that had dogged at him for eight years. 

His voice echoed and bounced off the wilds and hills of Planet Yarbow, and he released the hull of energy directly at the tower.  When the fizzling ki and smoke dissipated there was not a stone left, and Vegeta was left to gasp for air at the empty clearing.  Something aching and horrible lurched through him then, something he could not name it was so unfamiliar.  It sent a wild streak of energy coursing through his limbs and inward into his deepest core, and the recollection of her face just before Frieza’s death blow made it pulsate inside him more powerfully than he’d ever known it to.

Vegeta caught his breath, and stared at the leveled ground where the tower had been.  She was standing there amidst the dust and smoke, smiling and brushing the waterfall of hair away from her face.  She lifted one, barely visible hand as if to ask for something.  He laughed at her ghost and cocked one eyebrow in admiration.  Even her dead spirit was too forthcoming for a soldier… For a prince.

“You were a fool to hope anything of me, Bulma of Chikyuu,” he told her.  But he paused, irked by her still smiling face, and said the words he’d said to Nappa, “someday soon.”

 

#

 

“Remind me again why the _fuck_ we are on this backwater piece of moss in the first place?”  Raditz moaned aloud for the third time.

“Shut up, Third Class,” Nappa growled beside Vegeta, and the two big Saiyans exchanged beastly snarls.

“Both of you shut your fat mouths,” Vegeta snapped at them without a backward glance.  He took a deep breath and surveyed the village in front of them.  “We’ve come, Raditz, because Frieza sent us here.  Despite that your stupidity is frequently so obvious that a Quarlian rat could _sniff_ it, surely you might be able to understand why an immensely powerful, sadistic overlord would send us, his most deadly killers, to _any_ location.”

Vegeta tapped the frequency button on his scouter and concentrated hard on the village while Raditz shifted uncomfortably behind him.  Vegeta could hear his massive mane of coarse hair rustle against his armor.  He smirked with bitter disdain, and admitted, “I also had a time explaining a minor explosion on Planet Yarbow near the weapons facility.”

“Prince Vegeta, I meant no offense,” Raditz said, obsequious as always, “but we have received no order to _purge_ Planet Namek!  Why would Frieza send Planet Destroyers to a world he has no intention of destroying?”

“Don’t be such a shit-faced imbecile, Raditz!” Nappa hissed as Vegeta stepped forward a bit further, toward the edge of the moist rock and moss, and peered around a jutting rock formation.  “Of course he means to destroy it!”

Vegeta touched his scouter again, looking for any abnormally high power-levels.  He’d been warned by that sniveling sex-pet Zarbon that Namek would be a bit more challenging than Stahgrin had.  Though Raditz was, incredibly, correct at the moment.

“You fools are both fucking with my concentration,” he ground out through his teeth and craned his neck backwards to face the other Saiyans.  They regarded him with a combination of reverence, fear and frustration.  Raditz stood with his arms crossed, nostrils flared with contempt for his boredom, and Nappa merely looked down at his boots.

“I just meant,” Raditz said with careful, submissive tones, “that it’s odd he’s sent us here without purging orders.  I heard through other channels that it’s not just us he’s sent here, either.”

“The Ginyu Squad has been deployed as well,” Vegeta confirmed, moving back to stand by his comrades.  Nappa’s gaze fell on him with open-mouthed outrage.

“The Ginyu Squad?”  His eyes were wide as saucers with disbelief.  Raditz had clenched his fists and was now tightening both arms around his broad chest, nodding at the village of Namekians beyond the rocks.

“There’s something else here,” Raditz grumbled.  “Something he wants, and he can’t get it unless we keep these green hobgoblins alive—at least for now.”

Vegeta chuckled, a gentle and haughty sort of sound that probably sounded more maniacal than amused.  He lifted his gloved hands into the air and gestured one at the wild-haired Saiyan foot-soldier.  The gloves were new, shining white.

“Nappa, it seems we were wrong!  Raditz has you outwitted this time.”

Vegeta’s longtime bodyguard huffed and ran a hand over his shining bald head.

“What in the name of the Blood Goddess would Frieza want on this overgrown ball of weeds?” he sniped and pointed a finger at Raditz.  “Why don’t you educate me, you Third Class shithead?”

“ _Fuck_ you, Baldy!  Aren’t any more Third Class warriors to parade yourself in front of anymore, are there--!”

Vegeta’s jaw tightened and he shut both eyes in an effort to drown out the sight of the feuding warriors in front of him.  They were bored, he knew; they were bored, discontented and impatient.  Years of being subjugated, unable to voice their warrior’s rage at such a thing, had made them embittered even towards one another.  Vegeta begged whatever god would listen that his bastard father was rotting in hell for his injurious mistakes; the poor decisions he’d made out of a selfish impatience, heedless of the knowledge that Frieza could have beaten him a million times over without breaking a sweat.  Vegeta opened his eyes slowly, and saw that Raditz had gripped the collar of Nappa’s armor and was spitting venomous insults about his pretentious Elite mindset.  Nappa reached out to dig his fingers into the back of Raditz’ neck and roar like a disturbed predator.

After he’d returned from Yarbow, Frieza had first admonished Vegeta for leaving the weapons compound all for a seemingly ‘wasteful’ bit of destruction.  Those incompetent backstabbers hadn’t missed the opportunity to turn on him.  When Vegeta had merely smirked and told him he’d visited the ghost tower to ‘atone’ for his sins, Frieza had seen the veiled insult without much difficulty and laid into him the way Raditz was about to do Nappa.  But that time he’d actually had to expend energy--!

Vegeta remembered the feel of it as it burned through his armor and seared into the top layer of his skin.  He’d cried out and dropped to one knee, but that slick-skinned bastard had broken a sweat that day.  Vegeta sneered, just as he had then when the guards had dragged him away.  _‘Take the Monkey Prince back to the infirmary--!  Shallak--!’_   He’d spit curses and words in his language that Vegeta had never heard before.  ‘ _You’ll have me kill you one of these days, pet!!’_

‘Pet’.  ‘ _Pet’_ …

Vegeta snarled aloud, reached out and grabbed a handful of Raditz’ black mane.  He pulled down forcefully and lifted one boot to kick Nappa just hard enough so that the big oaf slammed up against a rock fixture to his left.  He slumped down and groaned, then shook his head to regain his bearings.  Raditz reached back impulsively but avoided Vegeta’s grip.

“Pr-Prince Vegeta,” he croaked in Saiyago as the white-gloved fingers tightened.  “With respect, Sire—agh!”

Vegeta tugged hard enough so that Raditz’ body dropped to the ground.  There he rolled back and forth for a moment in the ever-wet moss that covered most of Planet Namek.  Vegeta crossed his arms and reached up to press two fingers against the bridge of his nose.  He spoke plainly, without an edge, as he thought of the empty clearing where he’d blasted the remains of that tower down without a second thought.

“You two will settle this quarrel now without blood, and we will continue with our mission, or I swear to all the gods I’ll fucking kill you myself.”

Raditz had rolled onto his stomach, and he pushed himself up onto one knee in front of Vegeta.  Nappa repeated the gesture and coughed out a bit of the wet dust that had scattered when his body hit the rocks.  They both acknowledged him in Saiyago, and Vegeta lifted a hand to dismiss them as Nappa had taught him to so very many years ago.  They stood, panting, and Raditz put both hands on his knees.

“With respect, Sire,” he said breathlessly, “you know what Frieza wants?”

Vegeta looked back at the village for a moment, squinted and decided it was time to move out.  Based on Zarbon’s main directive, there was nothing here for them but a fat load of farmers.  He turned and gazed up at his Saiyan comrades, vainly satisfied at their inability to challenge him.  He uncrossed his arms and headed past the outcropping of rock, shouting back to them as they followed.

“That shit-eater Zarbon called them ‘Dragon Balls.’”


End file.
